1. The Deportation of America’s Adoptees
DeLeith Duke Gossett • Texas Tech University School of Law • •
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” ~Emma Lazarus
America was formed as a “nation of immigrants”
First 100 years was a time of unimpeded immigration
However, as more immigrant groups arrived, and competition for jobs increased, nativism drove much of the nation’s immigration and naturalization laws
Resulted in the federalization of immigration law and policies of exclusion
Nineteenth and twentieth centuries focused on the “categorical exclusion of people of Asian descent”
Extended to Latino population in twentieth century and continues today
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 automatically granted citizenship children of American citizens adopted from abroad
However, because of political compromise, the Act extended the protection of U.S. citizenship only to those under the age of 18
Meanwhile, an estimated 18,000 of these children, now adults, either face deportation or live “off the grid” in a de facto stateless status, constitutionally unable to vote, serve on a jury, seek public office, or enjoy other privileges of U.S. citizenship
Foreign-born children adopted by American citizens are subject to U.S. immigration law
Previous immigration law required that children born abroad and adopted by American parents undergo a separate naturalization process before the children received U.S. citizenship
Many parents did not complete that process and left their adopted children to reside in the United States as noncitizen immigrants, subject to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action for even minor, nonviolent criminal offenses
Many adoption agencies did not follow up with post-placement services, such as securing citizenship
The American immigration experience has been as much about exclusion as it has been inclusion.
This should be a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) expanded the list of deportable offenses under federal immigration law
At the same time, Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) restricted judicial review of removal actions
Divested trial judges of discretionary powers to recommend against deportation of non-citizen defendants
After 9/11, criminal history became the litmus test for undesirability
President Obama targets those with criminal history as priorities for deportation
Many adoptees face deportation back to their countries of origin—places to which they had no connection since birth—following even minor, nonviolent criminal convictions under AEDPA
Legislators introduced the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015, to grant citizenship to all foreign-born children adopted by U.S. citizen parents, regardless of age
However, it faces a formidable battle and little chance of passage amid current nativist concerns and polarized politics
“However heinous his crimes, deportation is to him exile, a dreadful punishment, abandoned by the common consent of all civilized peoples [S]uch a cruel and barbarous result would be a national reproach.”~ Judge Learned Hand